


Astra-314D

by orphan_account



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Amnesia, And guess what... I'm not sorry, F/M, Gen, Horror Elements, I am not sorry y'all, I'm smart but I'm not a rocket scientist, If Ridley Scott can get away with Alien I can get away with this, Lup is also very smart, M/M, Mystery Elements, TAZ... in space, THIS IS SLOWBURN, Taako is smart y'all, There's so much crack space science in this fic, space is beautiful and scary
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-27 15:54:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20410381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Seven brilliant academics come together on a state of the art spaceship, The Starblaster, to offer aide to a planet that's being ravaged by a strange disease nicknamed 'The Hunger'.Slowly but surely they find out maybe they weren't sent to Astra-314D for the reasons they were told. Slowly but surely they discover strange things about The Starblaster, about the institute they work for, about Astra-314D, and about themselves.But first, a few of them forget everything.





	1. Prologue - Alone

**Author's Note:**

> I watched Event Horizon and this fic just popped into my head. I've been outlining and plotting and researching, unfortunately I'm not a rocket scientist, so everything I say is Bad Science, but it's also Fun Science.   
I hope you enjoy.

He doesn’t wake slowly—the blaring of alarms, the disturbing flashing of red hazard lights is what does it—he’s yanked fully into consciousness. His body moves before his brain has the chance to catch up, muscle memory taking over as he shifts, quickly, rolling from his stomach to his back, he reaches across himself to grab… he isn’t sure what he’s planning to grab.

He draws his hand back slowly, empty and devoid of whatever item he had gone to grab on instinct alone. He takes in as much of his surroundings as possible, though his head is still foggy, weighed down by a metric ton of sand that he can’t quite wade through. There’s a pounding in his skull, a beat that keeps time with the blaring of the emergency alarms that paint the room he’s in a disarming shade of red.

There is no visible threat though. his heart slows, the lightning fast lub-dub easing with each moment he’s free from an attack he might never see coming. Eventually he stands, the sharp click of heeled boots on the metal flooring beneath him is grounding, it focuses him in the moment.

He breathes slowly, trying to take in his surroundings; the room he’s in is only slightly larger than average, metal plates beneath his feet and more metal plates on the wall. A huge door sits in the middle of the wall to his right. There’s a keypad of some sort on a podium in front of it. Somehow, without knowing anything about this place, and feeling like he barely knows himself, the man feels an intense sense of familiarity. 

He walks forward, counting the echoing clicks of his boots on the flooring. He counts ten clicks, _ten steps_, before he’s cleared the space and is standing nervously in front of the door. A sense of apprehension takes hold of him, it's grip vise strong around his lungs and heart as he stands there.

He reaches out, slowly, observing the bronze skin, though his skin takes on an almost sickly hue in the violent glow of the red lights, and painted nails— a soft periwinkle blue—as he does. His eyes graze over the soft skin of his wrist altered only by onyx ink. A sun, dramatic and beautiful is tattooed where his pulse point sits. This is his hand, right? He should know this hand.

He should know where he is.

He should know _who_ he is.

These are basic things. He should know this hand, the body connected to it. He should know his name.

But he doesn’t.

He continues to look at things through the strange filter of somebody experiencing life for the very first time.

The red hazard lights continue to flash.

The alarms continue to blare.

Through that same fuzzy filter he wonders, is he alone?

He reaches, forward and forward and forward. Fingers twitching in a show of anticipation, of fear, he doesn’t understand. Muscle memory takes control as he lowers his hand hesitantly to the podium. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting, he just knows that it will work.

And it does.

The top of the podium—where he places his hand—looks average, normal. But it changes the moment his skin comes in contact. He had assumed the top to be solid, an infrared scanner, his brain fills in automatically. Instead it’s soft, cool to the touch and reactive. A gel, almost as thin as water, comes off the podium and moves around his hand, it goes up no further than his wrist. The sensation is new to the man in a way that is new to anybody who realizes they cannot remember anything about themselves, somebody who is learning something for the first time, but also familiar in a way that reveals this is not the first time. This doesn’t cause him alarm.

Because, he assumes, in some way he’s used to it.

With a soft almost musical ding— a stark, shocking contrast to the deafening thrum of the alarms— the water-like gel recedes from his hand and the large metal doors in front of him slide open.

He steps out of the room and into a large open space. The floors are still metal, but patterned now, a design that cross hatches across the floor. It’s enough to make the man’s head spin. Walls of metal plating make up the bulk of the room. There are many differences between the area the man woke in and the one he now finds himself standing in, a chair sits in the middle with controls for what looks like steering in front of it. Six different chairs form a semicircle around the chair in the middle of the room. They’re all ergonomic in shape, various screens and dials and readouts are in front of them. Directly in front of the chairs is a window, almost larger than life. The man stares, open mouthed and in awe as he takes it in.

The window opens to the deep, inky blackness of a night sky. Stars dot the horizon and go for miles. They’re so close, so real and dense and right in front of him the man feels like he can reach out and grab one. The penultimate view though lies to the right, just out of the center of the huge window. A planet, awesome in size, sits closely enough that the man understands they’re within its orbit. The gravitational pull keeping them close as they rotate around and around it. It’s covered in what looks like turbulent skies, clouds of blue-black and a deep grey mix and swirl over the landscape.

_We’re in space_, the man thinks. Unaware of what _we_ means in this moment.

He moves toward a seat; to the right of the captain, second one in.

As soon as he sits the screen in front of him comes to life. A layout of the ship presents in front of him. He interprets and processes the information on autopilot. Pieces and parts of a larger puzzle connect in his head.

He’s on a ship, in space, orbiting a planet. The ship he’s on is trilevel, he’s on the uppermost observation deck. He entered through the starboard airlock; he knows there’s a portside airlock as well. Below him there’s living quarters. Below that there’s a lab. He sees the readouts on the screen and knows the ship is in reserve mode, though the engines and energy levels are fine. Objectively the man knows they would only put the ship in reserve mode if they weren’t on location. He thinks of the planet below them, the one he’s slowly orbiting, is he supposed to be down there?

He continues to flick through the screen, noting there’s no other life signs being logged on the ship. One lifeboat is missing and their exploratory ship is also gone.

Fear, potent and inebriating, courses through the man, chilling his veins. He can’t remember his name, he can’t remember the names of the people on the ship with him. He knows nothing of who he is, or why he’s here or what has happened. He can run basic functions on the ship but he knows without a doubt he is no pilot, no engineer. Until the pieces of a puzzle he doesn’t even have a picture of fall together he knows nothing.

He’s alone.


	2. Chapter 1: The Ship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When alone in the endless vacuum of space, hope is the only thing we have.

The man finds it hard to focus, with the flashing of the lights and the blaring of the alarms occurring in the background. The filter with which he is viewing everything becomes sharper, scarier, as he flicks through the screens controls. Now that he’s fully awake the metric tons of sand that weighed down his consciousness earlier are gone, replaced instead by the heady high that follows close on the heels of fear.

He checks again to ensure there are no other life signs on the ship. No threats presented, no monsters lurking around dark corners.

Why then are the alarms still blaring? The lights still flashing?

If he’s the only person on the ship, if he is truly alone, why do all the warning signs point to a threat of some sort? Why can’t the thundering of his heart fade completely into normalcy? Why is he covered in goosebumps?

It takes some searching, he flicks quickly through the applications. Eyes taking in words a mile a minute, processing and interpreting things he might want to return too. Eventually he stumbles into the administrative controls. With a sigh of relief he returns the ship to a more serene state.

The sudden silence doesn’t help the man. He finds it almost oppressive, a weighted blanket that settles over the room, over the entire ship. The silence screams almost as loud as the alarms did. It echos, heavy and laced with tension though the room, through the man. It takes a moment, but the absence of screaming alarms, of blinding lights does allow the man the ability to think.

Recalling the files he breezed through while searching for the administrative controls he swipes back, moving quickly through the ships routine maintenance logs and the auxiliary command controls, he stumbles and moves his way through until he finds what he’s looking for.

The communications logs. The man knows that if he hopes to discover any information about himself, about the rest of the ships crew and what they’re doing in space, orbiting a strange planet of awesome size, he’ll find it in the logs.

He feels his lips curl up into a smirk as he finds it. Fingers skim across the screen as he pulls up the communications logs of the crew member who occupies this seat during flights. The menu pops up quickly, displaying what looks like chat records with the crew members, individual and one that contains all members of the crew. The ship runs skeleton shifts it appears, only seven members total.

He moves past the communications, looking a little deeper. He isn’t sure how he knows, but he knows that the crew keeps daily video logs, that’s what he’s looking for.

And he finds it. Logs going back what appears months, potentially even longer than a year or two, jump onto the screen before the man.

He starts where any reasonable person would, with the most recent log, recorded only 20 hours ago. An elf man sits in front of the screen, he doesn’t appear to be in the room that the man currently occupies. He looks like he’s recording the log in the living quarters, probably his personal bunk from the looks of it.

_“This is Dr. Taako Kessler, recording crewman’s log number 493. Astra time is 0927 hours, planar time is 2127._

_“Orbit around Astra continues as predicted, no events have occurred. At this time a storm does seem to be brewing. Starblaster biologist and, uh, meteorologist? Merle Highchurch has noted the possibility of storms and, after consulting the recorded logs of weather during Starblaster orbit of Astra, predicted that this will be a storm of average strength, overall it will carry none of the possible astrological phenomena associated with Galactic Storm Alpha which occurred some years ago and was one of the precipitating events that prompted this mission, preceded by the almost total destruction of life on the planet by a disease crew members have nicknamed ‘The Hunger’. Specifics of the disease, how the bacteria activates, multiplies, incubation time and action are still only hypothesis for ship scientists and me. We have been working, shit, I mean… We have been working what feels like day and night to isolate a nucleus from a stable bacteria attained from a recently passed gnome. Like all previous attempts, we have been unable to isolate the nucleus and are no further in our attempts to develop a vaccine or cure of some sort._

_“A couple weeks ago ship safety officer and resident engineer, Magnus Burnsides, noted some soft, abnormal drains on the ship’s auxiliary energy systems. He brought this information to Dr. Lup Kessler, Dr. Bluejeans and me. We determined that potential energy surges from Astra may be causing the strange depletions in the ships power reserves. Magnus would like to take a trip planet side to see if there’s anything we can do about the surges. Captain Davenport approves of the mission and will be accompanying us down on the exploratory ship. Lucretia, our chronologist, will be going down as well._

_“Overall our small seven manned team will be going fully planetside for the estimated duration of a small reconnaissance mission. Magnus as well as Lup and I have placed the time off ship at approximately 5.75 hours. We leave at 1345—”_

The man pauses the video, drawing his fingers through the air to take it back a moment, he moves on autopilot as he brings his other hand up, drawing his thumb and forefinger out to zoom in on the man in the video as he speaks. He double taps the screen, knowing without knowing that this will slow the video, and that’s exactly what he wants.

He watches the video move by in slow motion, the voice of Dr. Taako Kessler distorted by the slowing of the footage. The doctor speaks with his hands a lot, flashes of soft bronzed skin here and there, wrists and hands peaking out from the overhanging edges of his sweater. The video moves slowly, the man able to observe each frame as it flies by, to the point he’s looking for.

Dr. Taako Kessler lifts his left hand— periwinkle blue nails catching in the fluorescent light—to push a chunky lock of golden hair out of his eyes. The movement reveals a tattoo on his wrist. A sun, celestial and stylized, right above his pulse point, the onyx black ink creates a deep contrast to the warm bronze of the mans skin.

The wind rushes out of the man, Taako, as he pauses the screen and leaves it. An image of Dr. Kessler— of himself?— flickers on the screen. The man takes in the soft features, full pink lips, a smattering of freckles across his cheeks and over his nose, the bright violet eyes, blond hair, long and pulled up into low bun at the nape of his neck. _Feminine, ethereal beauty_— the words appear in the mans head without invitation. Though, that’s what all elves are like, right? Forever youthful, beauty that is craved and desired among man and fae alike.

Of their own volition his hands move up, fingers tracing over the soft skin of his face. His lips are full, though the lower lip is busted on the right side, like he took a pretty good hit. His left eye is swollen, which accounts for the vision that remains slightly blurry. He runs shaking hands through his long blonde locks, there’s a bump on his head, he catches a snag or two.

The time stamp on the screen shows 0530. If Taako’s been awake for twenty minutes they were planetside for much, much longer than 5 hours.

He doesn’t bother dipping into the other logs, what will going back more days help him understand? He returns to the communications screen, seven chat screens appear in front of him, a small section readily available for each chat. He runs his eyes over them, not bring any of the messages up into their full capacity.

**Maggie Burns**

**Can I put in a vote for dinner tonight?**

**only if its good**

**Fried rice?**

**… i’m listening**

**Jules makes me fried rice back home**

**its usually for bad days, not that I’m**

**having a bad day.**

**I just..**

**yeah, Maggie. I think fried rice sounds good.**

**Thanks Taako, I appreciate it**

**Old Man**

**wanna do something nice for Davenport**

**my advice?**

**stop talking to plants like that in front of him**

**it's just weird.**

**also,**

**he likes those bee orchids.**

**and chocolate**

**you know Cretia has the chocolate hookup**

**thanks Ko**

**you can also just tell him how you feel**

**physically i cannot handle another Lup and Barold**

**that's a no**

**Cresh**

**chaboy needs his cocoa fix babe**

**pls**

**I don’t have many regrets, Taako.**

**But, and I mean this honestly,**

**letting you know I have chocolate is one**

**… i’ll get you honey for your tea**

**Deal**

**Sildork**

**Barold if i have to tell you again**

**not to eat in the fucking lab**

**i will personally fillet you.**

**alive**

**idc how much Lup likes you**

**It was Lup.**

**excuse you, Barry. Lup would NEVER**

**I swear.**

**and i do mean NEVER eat pb and mayonnaise**

**you disgust me**

**Ask her.**

**Hula-Lup**

**Lulu**

**say itisn’t so**

**… it’s Barry’s fault**

**i can’t believe this**

**betrayed by my own blood**

**Koko, pls**

**PB AND MAYO LUP. THIS IS UNFORGIVEABLE**

The quick views of the texts divulge nothing. They’re not enlightening, they don’t give Taako some lightbulb moment into who he is or who these people are, or what they are doing aboard this ship. He gains no answers, from this little peak into their everyday life, no pieces of the puzzle falling pleasantly into place. Instead, he gains a few questions. How is he related to this Lup? Who is Barold?

With a flick of his wrist the man flies through more video entries. Maybe the previous logs of Dr. Taako Kessler can reveal something after all.

_“This is Dr. Taako Kessler, recording Starblaster ship log number 360. Astra time is 1745, planar time is 0545._

_“I know we are supposed to keep these logs professional. I believe IPRE said and I quote ‘keep it straight and to the point, objectivity is key’, but they fucked up in two places because I am clearly not straight and there are seven of us on a spaceship, 1000 lightyears from home, objectivity is dead._

_“So in that same line of thinking I would like to publicly say that our time in orbit around Astra is different than we had expected in our planar observations of the planet. IPRE researchers, as well as the Starblaster team, had measured Astra days out as pretty similar to planar days. So, fancy my surprise when we finally hear back from our bosses to learn that, planar time, it’s only been thirty days since our tearful departure._

_“Let me repeat that, thirty days for them. In reality time seems to be moving differently, to say the least, for us, and it is, it… really fucking is. We have been here for 360 Astra days, that’s three planar years, but we haven’t… aged? Like, if we had planar for these last days Maggie would be showing some age, Lucretia and Barry as well. They’re human, they age pretty averagely. But Lucretia and Magnus, Barry, they’re—”_

The Taako of now watches the Taako of the past closely. He observes the way he slides a hand over his face, exhaustion in the motion as he attempts to rectify what he’s sure he knows and what he thinks he knows. Taako observes the way his hair falls, how he moves his hands when he talks— nails painted a soft silver at this time— he drinks it all in. As if watching these logs of himself will help him come to a deeper understanding.

It doesn’t happen, no divine sliding of memories into place.

_“They’re the same. They’re just as spry as the day we left. In fact, and this is weird. I… I am a wizard. And I am a cook. But I am also a man of science. I respect that magic and science are forces that interact together more often than they antagonize each other. This is why I have my doctorates, this is why Lup has her doctorates. We understand that to be better wizards, to better understand our craft, we have to understand the other forces that act with and against it as well._

_“So believe me when I say that I’m not quite sure how this happened, or what it means. But, when I was making breakfast the other day, Maggie came into the kitchen with a black eye. And this isn’t, I guess it’s not that strange but nothing had happened the day before? It had been completely normal, we went planetside for a little over an hour to grab samples, we spoke with locals, checked in on the quarantined, looked for any signs of stopping ’The Hunger’ received nothing and came back up. We didn’t run drills, the ship was running fine so Maggie didn’t go into any of the engineerings halls, never stepped below deck, didn’t even open the engine compartment._

_“So I’m making breakfast and I keep glancing at this huge shiner he has, for some reason I just can’t take my eyes off it. Then, in stumbles Lup, and she looks… well she looks hungover. Like maybe she had a few too many. Which isn’t a possibility because we’ve all been dry the entire mission. So I’m trying not to burn my eggs while staring at Lup as she looks like death warmed over— honestly, the woman looked exactly like she did the day after our 121_ _ st _ _ or after we got our acceptance into the Academy— when Merle walks in, and guess what the fuck is wrong with Merle? His right hand is swollen and agitated. It’s so strange. And in the middle of making this breakfast for the crew, some of the people who have become my closest friends in the world, I realize why this scene is so strange to me.”_

The Taako of the past pauses violet eyes staring into the camera; his gaze is so intense it seems almost like he’s looking through the lens, into the future. One Taako staring through to another Taako, as if he knows that someday he’ll look back at this log. That the gravity of what’s happening will hit him all over again.

_“It’s strange because that’s the exact condition we were all in when we boarded the Starblaster to leave for this mission. Maggie had a black eye from a fist fight he and Merle got into. Merle’s hand was swollen and busted. Lup was hungover because she never knows when to quit drinking. And… when the realization hits me, I felt it. The night before I had been careful not to drink too much, but I guess I failed, I drank just enough that I wasn’t my sharpest. On the way back to the Academy my boot caught in a hole and I twisted my ankle. I’m serving breakfast and suddenly I go down, my ankle just totally gives out.”_

The man shakes his head, eyes suddenly glossy and far away, as if he’s observing something off screen.

“_I mean, I know there’s a reasonable explanation for it. For the strange passage of time. For time not hitting Lucretia or Barry or Magnus the way it should. For the strange injuries and how they were so, so similar to the way we were that first day on the ship._

_“I’m sure there’s a logical, reasonable explanation. Something that ties magic and science together the same way we do every moment or every day here on the Starblaster. I just… I can’t wrap my head around what it would be._

_“Oh, uh, yeah. This has been Astra orbit day 360. No abnormal findings on the planet below, ship stasis is normal. This is, uh, this is Dr. Taako Kessler, signing out.” _

The log ends, and once again the Taako of now. The Taako with a bump on his head and a split lip is left with no answers and more questions. He stands, moving away from the screen, the thought of going through any more of his logs causing his stomach to flip.

He moves to the left, sitting in front of a different screen, which comes to life with a swipe of his fingers all the same. He flicks through the screens that appear in front of him, swiping left then right, up then down until he finds what he’s looking for. He doesn’t stumble into Dr. Lup Kessler’s logs, he finds them deliberately, he opens them with purpose and he watches the last recorded log with a careful eye.

An elf woman who looks strikingly like Dr. Taako Kessler is positioned in the middle of the screen, her eyes are lined in sharp black liner, mascara painting her blond lashes dark, giving her eyes have a slightly more feline look than Taako’s. Unlike Taako, Dr. Lup Kessler has her hair cut at about shoulder length, a sharp bob that starts high in the back and ends just above her collar bone in the front. It’s angular and intense, Taako finds himself thinking that few could pull it off, and that’s why Lup chose the cut. Her hair is a fiery red, blonde roots just peaking out from the color. Her eyes are a deep violet like his, the contrast of her violet eyes with the red of her hair is hypnotic, Taako can’t look away. He doesn’t want to. Lup. Taako’s still fighting an uphill battle, brain still struggling to fit the pieces of this puzzle together, the connections aren’t forming the way he wants and the oppressive silence left by the deactivation of the alarms continues to weigh on his conscious. But he knows Lup is everything to him. He can’t remember her voice, her laugh. If her face wasn’t his face, he wouldn’t know who she is.

That though scares him, it scares him more than being alone on a spaceship with no idea of who he is in the soundless vacuum of space.

He presses play, eyes dancing over the freckles on her face. He wonders if hers create the same constellations as his.

_“This is Dr. Chalupa ‘Lup’ Kessler. Video log number, uhm, number 493. Astra time is 1315, planar time is 0115._

_“We are approximately 20 minutes from meeting at the Starblaster’s exploratory ship for a short trip planetside. Understanding that the estimated time planetside and possible delaying factors such as, storms, meetings with the locals and the such, I have decided to record today’s log early._

_“The reason for today’s long trip planetside is the occurrence of some mild drain to the Starblaster’s auxiliary power systems. Ship engineer and security officer, Magnus Burnsides, noted the drain approximately two weeks ago Astra time, he’s been trying to fix it, but we noted the possibility of an Astra related cause and have decided to go planetside to investigate. All members of the Starblaster need some items so it’s turned into a crew trip. The time down shouldn’t be longer than six hours._

_“Routinely I would like to mention that tests and experiments into the disease labeled by ship crew as ‘The Hunger’ have continued without success. Dr. Bluejeans and myself have been unable to pin a stable nucleus in any samples that were deemed safe for testing. Without the ability to extract a nucleus we are unable to start DNA testing. Without DNA testing a vaccine and antidote are unable to be developed. Dr. Taako Kessler, Dr. Bluejeans and I have been working hard during our trips planetside to keep active disease cases quarantined and victims comfortable. Not all who contract ‘The Hunger’ succumb to it, some survive. So far we have been unable to determine the defining factor on who dies and who lives when it comes to contraction of the disease.”_

Lup quiets now, her face growing thoughtful and pensive as she looks at a location off screen. A muffled voice says something in the background. It’s familiar, just tickling the back of Taako’s conscious, but the amnesia keeps everything at bay. In a movement that almost exactly mirrors that of Taako in the other video she brings her left hand up, pushing the red locks of hair out of her face. A tattoo similar to the one on Taako’s wrist is on hers. A moon, stylized and celestial, black tattoo ink the only marring on her skin.

_“Fortunately I think we have been able to slow the progression of the disease. It’s currently 1325 and we still have checks to do before going planetside. With that I’ll sign off._

_“This has been Dr. Lup Kessler, recording log number 493.”_

Taako pauses the video as Lup signs off. Fingers brushing over the flickering screen that is her face. He takes in her ruby red lips, soft smile at whoever is sitting on the other side of the screen, the way her hair falls. They’re related, twins he assumes by how similar their faces are, and the way he mentioned ‘their’ birthday in one of his logs.

Where is she?

What happened planetside?

Is she still down there?

Taako stands, moving from behind Lup’s seat, the first one directly to the right of the pilot. Next was where he initially sat. His seat. Who sat on his right then?

Taako sits, sighing deeply as the screen comes to life. He skips through the menu, flicking up and down, left and right just like he did at Lup’s screen until he finds the communications logs.

He opens the most recently recorded log, eyes widening a fraction of an inch at the image of the man as it appears before him. The man is handsome, engaging green eyes observe everything from behind glasses with square black frames, curly brown hair falling in lose locks over his forehead. His voice is earthy, gravely yet soft as he speaks.

_“This is Dr. Barr- uh, fuck. I guess after, uh, 493, almost 494 days I was bound to start slipping up. But honestly, what kind of name is Sildar?_

_“Anyway, this is, uh, Dr. Sildar ‘Barold Bluejeans’ Hallwinter, recording log number 493. Astra time is 1230, planar time is 0030._

_“In approximately an hour we will be meeting to go planetside. Several small missions have called us there. Magnus Burnsides, the ships security officer and engineer will be partnering up with Dr. Taako Kessler and searching for any trace of the power surges they believe might be causing the drain to the ships auxiliary power sources._

_“Dr. Lup Kessler and I will be returning to the quarantine zones, accompanied by Lucretia. We need to check up on victims of ‘The Hunger’ , Lucretia accompanies us on this trip to help document what’s occurring._

_“Davenport and Merle will be heading into the closest towns to find resources we will be needing for the foreseeable future._

_“Regarding the virus, Lup, Taako and I are working hard but are unable to isolate the nucleus, I’m sure this has been told time and time again by the logs of everybody aboard the Starblaster. We are also seeing little success in endeavors to document what exactly happens with the disease. As far as we can tell the patient falls sick, and is dead within 30 days, or after 25 days they’re fine. In cases where we are able to slow it, patients can survive up to 60 days before death. We have yet to actively cure a case. There are few signs and symptoms, many could easily be mistaken for allergies, the common cold, a hangover. We continue to monitor the remaining population of Astra closely. I— well, I fear that this entire people will die before our eyes._

_“This is, uh, this has been Dr. Barold Bluejeans, log number 493.”_

Taako moves like that, the left side of the captain’s chair sat Lucretia first, then Merle, Magnus taking the position furthest from the captain but closest to the door. He watches with intensity as they come into focus on the screen, record a few basic thoughts about ‘The Hunger’, their trip planetside or some small thing that’s occurring on the ship.

He smiles at the man on the screen. Magnus with huge, trusting doe-eyes soft and brown, sideburns trimmed and immaculate as he begins his log by stating dogs should vote, and ends it by blowing his wife a kiss.

Where is Magnus now? Is he safe? Will he be returned home to his wife in one healthy piece? Will he return to his workshop and build again, pet their dogs, kiss his daughter on the head? Taako’s stomach churns.

He moves forward to the next screen, the seat is up so high Taako has to look down at the screen in front of him.

Merle, he assumes, is very, very short.

Taako watches, actually very interested, as the man, a slightly weathered looking, hippie of a dwarf with flowers braided into his hair and beard, rattles off a few plants that have helped medicinally ease ‘The Hunger’, though without definite testing nothing can go further, he’s treating what few symptoms they can now, not the disease as a whole. The entire log the man tends to a succulent in his hand, whispering nice things to it, causing it to grow right before the viewers eyes.

Taako’s heart falls to his feet, is Merle okay? If everybody on the ship is as capable as they seem from their log, if they had been able to survive 492 days what changed? What about their trip down to Astra yesterday was different?

The last screen to the left of the pilots seat— Davenport’s (nicknamed Cap’n’Port by Magnus) place— is Lucretia’s. Taako opens the screen, noting the small file on the side that indicates pages and pages of transcribed notes. He finds her communication logs and watches, intently, as a woman with hair a stunning silver and skin that’s dark and beautiful carefully details as much information as she can of the mission. She easily compiles everything he had learned from the last five logs into one. Her voice is soft, lilting and professional, her words exact and precise. Taako understands immediately why she’s the chronologist for the mission.

Something about the captains seat, looking through the logs of Davenport gives him pause. Maybe it’s the breech of command, but he avoids it. Taako tells himself he’ll come back to those logs if he needs too.

Exhaustion, sudden and acute washes over him. It settles heavy on his bones and drags him down, down down. He needs sleep, rest. He needs… he needs the other crew members of the Starblaster. He needs somebody to fill in the holes in his memory so he can feel complete again.

But until then he needs a shower and his bed, he needs a little spell to ease the headache that’s been brewing since the moment he opened his eyes. He’ll take care of that, focus on getting a little food in his belly, a little rest, and when he wakes he will put his plan into action.

Come tomorrow, he’ll find the rest of the Starblaster crew, they’ll reunite and they’ll help him remember and when he remembers things will become whole again. He comforts himself, thinking these thoughts on repeat as he walks down the short ramp that leads to the ‘second’ story, their living quarters.

He’s scared that if he allows himself to doubt this, to worry about the lives of the others, he’ll become frozen with fear. He has to work on the assumption they are alive and well. They’re okay and they remember him better than he remembers them. He has to work on the assumption that they will be reunited and together they’ll move forward.

If Taako doesn’t have this, he has nothing.

The only thing worse than being alone, is having nothing.


End file.
